In large enterprise businesses, different software systems (otherwise referred to as applications, modules and the like) are deployed for the purpose of carrying out prescribed actions. For example, an enterprise may deploy one or more software systems to monitor the health of the computing system, one or more other software systems to move data throughout the enterprise and one or more other software systems for messaging. All of these software systems are stacked on the servers within the enterprise to carry out the request functionality. Each of these software systems are generally independent of each other; i.e., different commercial manufacturers and/or execute under different operating systems. As such, these diverse software systems require a high degree Information Technology (IT) support and maintenance to ensure that the systems are capable of working in unison. Additionally, each of these independent software systems implement distinct tracking controls and governance, which further increase maintenance costs.
Further, in many large enterprises, computing servers or other networked devices are distributed globally across a diverse computing network infrastructure. The various servers deployed in the network implement many different operating systems that execute a myriad of different software packages, applications, tools and the like. In many instances a single server may host many different software packages, applications or the like.
Further, in large enterprises, with many different computing environments and business units/lines-of-business (LOBs), timely deployment of services and/or the updating/patching of such services is highly problematic. This is because the data associated with servers, business units/LOBs and other data relevant to deploying the updates is spread across many different data sources and the like.
Therefore, a need exists to develop systems, apparatus, computer program products, methods and the like that for a unified and comprehensive service delivery system that is extensible and provides one methodology for accessing Operating Systems (OSs) and all of the servers deployed throughout an enterprise. Further, a need exists to manage deployment of services and updates to such services and, specifically, automate the process of deploying the services and providing updated versions of the services, such that the deployment of critical updates/patches across all computing servers requiring such is ensured and occurs within prescribed time limits. Moreover, a need exists to automatically determine optimal schedule for deploying the software and/or update/patch to each of the network devices requiring such.